We are all surely familiar with those stories of naive young Brits who travel abroad and are persuaded by a charming new holiday friend to bring back what they’re told is an innocuous package, only to end up on the sharp end of drugs smuggling charges. The latest series of the BBC’s World of Secrets somewhat inverts those expectations: it tracks the fortunes of three innocent young Brazilian sailors and a French captain who were allegedly duped by a Norwich businessman into sailing a rackety yacht across the Atlantic with £100 million worth of cocaine hidden in the body of the ship.
‘One thing you find on breakfast TV is that as your career declines you go on earlier and earlier’
The boat was called the Rich Harvest, a title which suggests a hand-rubbing anticipation of financial reward. Sadly, the unsuspecting crew reaped the whirlwind. The podcast’s presenters, Yemisi Adegoke and Colin Freeman, chart a compelling course through a twisty, novelistic tale which begins with two of the Brazilian sailors, Daniel and Rodrigo, describing how they were lured into the voyage to start with: their desire to gain documented sailing experience; a respectable-looking advertisement; and confidence-building encounters with the ‘trustworthy’, likeable Englishman known as Fox, who had been renovating the yacht in Brazil and was now asking them to help sail it to Europe.
Yes, the yacht was ‘ugly and untidy’ below deck, and Rodrigo’s parents were worried about him, but Fox was full of assurances. Even a raid from the Brazilian police and their sniffer dogs – energetically hunting for drugs on Rich Harvest and not finding anything – acted as a kind of comfort that all was above board. But Fox – who was meant to be on the boat – changed his travel plans.
Give or take a handful of tranquil days, the trip quickly lurched into disaster: a hapless captain had to be exchanged for a more competent Frenchman; the fourth crew member fell horribly ill, putting extra strain on the others; tempers frayed, and then the yacht’s engine failed, and they had to moor in Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa for repairs. Then the local police – who had received a tip-off from the UK’s National Crime Agency – made a more determined search and hit the jackpot: bricks of cocaine. Before long all the horrified crew were banged up in prison.
The plot moves nearer home as the presenters and their team close in on George ‘Fox’ Saul, a solicitor’s son, in his respectably middle-class Norwich stronghold. An ominous glimpse into their subject’s inner life is supplied by an acquaintance who recalled that ‘he used to quote a lot of Guy Ritchie movies’.
One of many enjoyable aspects of this podcast is that while the presenters work together seamlessly, they avoid the annoyingly breathless hyping of drama which is a frequent irritant in podcasts. It’s replaced by a nice line in pointed understatement. As Freeman braces himself for the moment of confrontation in a leafy lane with this unlikely alleged kingpin, he observes warily: ‘He always brings his dog, a Belgian Malinois, known for being very protective of their owners.’ The dog, in fact, seems fairly relaxed – unlike the clearly uncomfortable, cornered Fox.
While dying must eventually come to all, very few of us have grown accustomed to the idea. Perhaps that’s why, as Sarah O’Reilly explores in Famous Last Words, insights from death’s anteroom rarely fail to fascinate. Although last words have been collected since time immemorial, the genre was given an adrenalin shot in 1994 by the dramatist Dennis Potter in conversation with Melvyn Bragg on Channel 4. Potter was dying of pancreatic cancer, and his sharp, poignant observations made a memorable case for the wonder of the world just as he was about to leave it. By living only ‘in the present tense’, as he put it, he noticed the ‘nowness of everything’ – including the white plum-blossom just outside his window – with more alert appreciation than ever.
I would have liked a bit more of the Potter interview itself here, rather than other people talking up its impact. But the programme still gives an absorbing greatest hits tour of subsequent figures who found interesting things to say at one minute to midnight, even if the clock sometimes stalled – as it did with the late writer and broadcaster Clive James, who received his terminal diagnosis, told everyone he was about to die, and survived for some years after that. ‘I’m a performer,’ he joked about his long goodbye, ‘I’m stuck with that. Look at me, I’m over here, I’m dying!’
Lastly, fans of Frank Skinner’s popular Absolute Radio show will have been cross when it was unaccountably axed last spring. But the good news is that he has recreated it in podcast form with his original co-hosts, Emily Dean and Pierre Novellie. It’s a pleasure to dip in to, and enjoyably rich in traditional British self-deprecation, a humorous art now widely endangered by the rise of Instagram boasting culture. Skinner reflected on his recent appearance on Good Morning Britain, in which he forgot to be sufficiently enthusiastic about his own podcast: ‘One thing you find on breakfast television is as your career declines you go on earlier and earlier.’ He was driven in, he said, while it was still dark.
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